Teeny Tiny Reviews

Often, I find a book/series that I love so much that I can't even express how much I love it. You just gotta accept the fact that its great and will change your life. This page is going to be devoted to the tiniest reviews, so I can just blurt out how it made me feel!

TV

House of Cards 

Oh my goodness, the filmography, the writing, the relationship, the shocks! I have never watched a political drama (yet to watch The Thick of It) and would totes have assumed it would be boring as hell. HOW WRONG. I love this peep into American politics and have come to love/hate the anti-hero that is Frank Underwood. The manipulations, when he addresses the viewers...it's just grand. It is shot very stylishly and sometimes I'd pause it just to admire. By the way, I watch absolutely everything with subtitles anyway, which is a naughty habit, but for this one it was pretty essential so I wasn't like whaaaaaaaa?! Review done, *taps desk with ring*

Hannibal
I did have to be persuaded to watch this one, as I'm massively squeamish! But after watching Season 1 + 2, I'm glad I did. I must confess, I may have only watched 85% has I had to avert my gaze so much from the gruesomeness! However the plot was fantastic, completely original and kept you guessing. Hannibal's cheeky references to his habit and the WEIRD way you started to fancy him even though he was a psychopath with a naughty penchant for eating humans. Again, veeeeeeeeery stylistic but it such a good way. AND, last but not least, THE WAY HE PREPARES FOOD! I have never seen anything cooked so deliciously and you really start to wonder whether you'd have a taste, yanno, just for the mouth explosion. I also watched this on NowTV, which doesn't offer subtitles. I had to read the script online just to keep up!

Books

Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy

Words cannot express my love for this trilogy. It's everything I ever wanted in a set of three books. The different worlds, the magic, plots and characters that were massively original and I'd never read anything like it. Which in this day and age is a more difficult thing to accomplish! Whenever I think of something I want to write, I have this trilogy in mind as inspiration. It is fantasy and young adult, but hey, that's ma jam. Just go read it, now. That's it, drop whatever you're doing and head to the Kindle website. Now. (Okay, just had a look and the new book covers are pretty cheesy with a girl with some masks on - ignore that and buy!)

HOW DO YOU READ!

Ahem, I mean welcome to Opal Light! Sorry for shouting at you so soon, I'm over-excited.

Opal Light is my second attempt at a blog, I loved the first one but just lost momentum 6 or 7 posts in. Something that will not happen this time, pinkie promise!

(Not mine)
Oh god, these are amazeballs notes. I almost feel
like going back to Uni to recreate these. Nah.

By yelling HOW DO YOU READ, I mean how the heck do you retain information? This isn't usually a problem with fiction, we tend to let the story wash over us and, providing it's a good book, get lost in the plot and characters. But what about non-fiction?

I used to be pretty good at studying independently, at least that's what I used to tell the lecturers at college and uni when the 'absent AGAIN' emails come rolling in. (As much as they say you can't learn from the powerpoint, it's certainly doable). But that's when I'd be doing it hardcore, in a desperate attempt to prove my professors wrong. Sparkly pens, write it all out, write it again, make quiz cards, boom.

But now I have no academic reason to read books for the purpose of learning anymore. And, as much as I used to moan, I miss it! I go to the library and get 10 books a time with every intention of educating myself on something completely new. Out of the ten books, I read about two of them. Lets say each book is 80,000 words. So that's 160,000 words that have entered in my head. And what happens to them? It goes like this:

Picture a pub scene, pints on the table, the mood is light. Someone brings up something about learning new things and neurons. I think, I've read a whole book on this and how the brain works! I can wax lyrical! I was amazed when I was reading it, I can make everyone as blown away as I was! I can finally share this knowledge!

'Yeah, I read about that! The brain makes those new things every time and it has little thingymajigs that connect and they studied it at, I can't remember, and the study showed the more we do something, the easier it gets, and...'

...and then I trail off because I have realised I can't add any real information and everyone looks a little bit disappointed with my enthusiastic vagueness. 80,000 words of amazing, delicate, accurate, provoking information, and I sound like someone who read the blurb and popped it back on the shelf. I came across so many fantastic facts that could be so applicable to my life, and the only thing I can take away from it is 'dude, the brain is cool'.

I do it with ted talks, life hack articles, the news, other blog posts. The amount of information we get is over-whelming, but it's so annoying when you feel it is all so relevant and you're never going to take it in. The end result is a very, very general idea about the topic.

I got a book out about meditation and wanted to retain all of it (probably because I'd come across numerous articles about it, and after lots in-depth research, I could come to the detailed conclusion that meditation = good). So I started, in Uni style, to just copy it out using sparkly pens. After sheets and sheets of A4 full of my writing, and considering the rich history and culture of meditation, I thought I had lost the point a bit. (And I can't remember any of it, who heard of meditation quiz cards?)

For the sake of my pub conversations, how do you read information for fun, and make sure it actually goes in?

P.S The brain book is The Blissful Mind by Shanida Nataraja. I don't do it justice as it is brilliant to read!

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